


FEMSLASH FEBRUARY 2021

by Saraste



Category: Badehotellet, Carmilla - J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Dracula & Related Fandoms, Once Upon a Time (TV), The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, Femslash February, Ficlet Collection, Multiple Fandoms, Multiple ships, Tags in Individual Chapters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-12 04:54:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 28
Words: 4,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29129847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saraste/pseuds/Saraste
Summary: Ficlets written for Femslash February 2021 using a prompt list shared by tumble usertoxicisnotapineapple.
Relationships: Amanda/Fie, Carmilla & Laura (Carmilla), Evil Queen | Regina Mills/Emma Swan, Mina Murray/Lucy Westenra, Éowyn (Tolkien)/Tauriel (Hobbit Movies)
Comments: 46
Kudos: 17





	1. for the stars are in her eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Éowyn and Tauriel are wives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 1: stars.

The stars are in Tauriel’s eyes, they  _ are _ stars, Éowyn is often convinced, for her love is an elf and they are more spirit than flesh, as all know.

Or so she has always believed, before, but now she knows full well how very  _ touchable  _ elves are. what she touches with curious, reverent fingers shivers under her touch and the weight upon her feels solid, not intangible.

And while kissing and being kissed by those lips that too often smile sadly, even if Tauriel’s eyes are always star-bright and happy, might be a spiritual experience, it’s also very not. As for other delights of the flesh… well. Those shall forever remain private between the two of them.

Now their spirits are entwined and the stars blink brighter than ever up in the night-sky as they lie upon a flowering and buzzing summer meadow, holding hands and stargazing, and Tauriel is her lady wife, despite the sorrow it will bring both.

But they keep hold on to the happiness of now and speak of forever and the future is like stars: bright.


	2. by unearthly magic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mina doesn't care why Lucy still walks the earth, just that she does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for day 2. magic. | Tags: westenray, canon what canon, perfect drabble, Mina doesn't care about your nonsense.

There is no natural way that her Lucy should be walking and talking and loving like she is, yet Mina cares not. A world without her darling in it would be the unnatural one, not this, where Lucy can wind her cold arms around her, where her skin is perhaps a little too pale and smiles sharp when the mood is upon her. 

She is Lucy, sharpened to a blade, the only one whom Mina will ever truly live with all her heart, until her last breath.

And if Lucy exists animated by some unearthly magic, then so be it.


	3. the passing of years

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucy gives Mina a pearl for every year they are together since her rebirth... or so she thinks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 3. pearl. westenray, angst, canon what canon, rating: E.

To mark the passing of years now that they live outside the world, Lucy buys Mina a pearl for each year that passes. 

Mina wears them on a string around her neck and has a full pearl necklace going around her throat long before enough years have passed since Lucy’s transformation to account for it.

Lucy is starting to forget, grow vague, to pass beyond mortal time, even if she  _ is _ still vulnerable and subject to an end from which there is no return. Mina does not correct her, not even when she has a double strand around her in far too short a time and her own mortal years still only counting twenty and eight while Lucy looks not a day older than eighteen.

‘Is my blood keeping you young?’ Lucy sometimes asks, her delicate, blue-veined fingers playing with the pearls around Mina’s neck, covering the marks of her affections which heal slower and slower by the year.

Mina lets her own fingers sink into Lucy’s wild russet curls and she sighs, her heart skipping as those nimble fingers move away the pearls and she knows what is coming.

She doesn’t fight her, she never did, never could, never will, now.

Lucy takes her fill, lingering upon her sip and Mina trembles upon the precipice to oblivion, because it is not enough.

It seems to never be, now.

‘Harder,’ she begs, knows that it is her fault that she has scars, cares not, as pain, sharp and lovely, overflows her and she is gasping and trembling.

As she lies, still trembling and completely spent, in Lucy’s familiar cold embrace, Mina wonders briefly when she herself will start forgetting the pass of years, or the significance of the pearls… will she grow old enough to even match half of the pearls around her neck.

Or will Lucy forget herself first and take what Mina might give willing, and bathe her strand of pearls in crimson blood?

She sleeps.

And in the morning there is a new pearl.


	4. the joy of flowers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> FLUFF.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 4. flowers - Éowyn/Tauriel, fluff, perfect drabble.

Éowyn doesn't think that she has ever seen as lovely a sight as Tauriel with flowers in her hair, and she has seen her wife in a variety of lovely states, each uniquely beautiful on their own right and a precious memory to cherish.

She’s never had such a summer as their first together: a long, endless-seeming string of days and nights, filled with the beauty of life, the fragrance of flowers crushed under their bodies, forever affixed to those memories.

And the gentle joy of Tauriel braiding flowers into her hair, pressing kisses onto her neck, murmuring soft nonsense.


	5. waves of grief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The sea doesn't beckon Tauriel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 5: waves. | éowyn/tauriel, perfect drabble, angst

She'd avoided the shore for all the too short years of a mortal life, but now here she is, staring into the waves lapping at the shore… and she feels empty.

Or at least devoid of an urge to sail, for she  _ is _ full of grief, the stars in her eyes having lost their light the day Éowyn's had closed. She'd let her sorrow consume her, then, cursing her heart that she should ever have loved a mortal, even if she wouldn't have had it any other way. 

I'm not made to sail, my love,' she tells the hair-whipping wind.


	6. blue twilight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mina watches Lucy dance in freshly fallen snow and joins in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 6. snow. | Tags: westenray, ficlet, canon what canon, dark.

It is eerie to watch Lucy dancing in the freshly fallen snow, so unconcerned with the cold and relishing in it. Her head is bent back so the snow falls onto her face and her wild red hair, so carelessly yet fetchingly gathered into a loose bun, but more curls than I care to count hang loose about her face. She looks like she _belongs_ in this moment in a more visceral way than ever before and maybe for all time hereafter; laughing with her eyes crinkled shut, her coat open, swirling in the snowfall so quick that it would make a mere mortal dizzy, but simply makes her giggle even more. 

She is alive in a way that transcends mere mortality, her joy is too much brimming over to be allowed and her still to be called a good woman, and wanting to be nothing but, in any case.

She isn’t, but then neither am I, now.

Because I have said _no_ , I have refused to let men dictate my life in the guise of guidance, their only reason that Lucy had to be dealt with was because of what she’d become: free. They could not contain her any longer and so, she had to die. I couldn’t abide that and so did what I had to in order to ensure Lucy was safe and that they could _never_ hurt her again.

And so, we have come to be here, the snowfall blocking away the weak sunlight of the late afternoon, casting everything into lovely shades of blue, with me standing here, watching as Lucy dances without a care in the world. I watch her delight, knowing full well the cost of it, which I deem not too much, not for her freedom, her joy. _Her existence._

No-one will take her away from me or even try, ever again, not as long as I walk this earth.

Lucy's eyes are like stars, bright and twinkling, as she holds her hand out to me, inviting me to dance, to be wild, and free. We twirl together in the falling snow, close and snug, and I kiss her cold lips, open in a giggle, until I'm breathless enough for both. 

There is nothing better, nothing more beautiful than her in this blue twilight, deepening until my mortal eyes do not see but the shape of her and her eyes glinting preternaturally in the gloom, danger and death to some, but not me.

I have been selfish, some may say incredibly so, but what is selfishness if it cannot be used for saving others?

Lucy saved me from a life of ignorance, once, freeing me with a kiss to see that there could be so much more, that I could be so much more, that she might be everything I could ever desire for the rest of my days. How could I not save her, even if she had been seemingly changed by her dark rebirth? Yet I say that she merely shrugged off the vestments of respectability society, which had forced upon her, or rather, had forced her to wear, as inside, she has always and only ever been herself, something the world hasn’t been ready for when it was revealed.

Or at least those foolish men in our lives.

I shiver, but not from the cold surrounding us, and Lucy wraps me close inside her open coat, even if her body won’t warm mine, only my heart.

I cherish the moment and am content.


	7. morning grey eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tauriel thinks abiut Éowyn's eyes and where a chance meeting led the two of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 7. eyes | Tags: Tauriel/Éowyn, mentioned past-kiliel, canon what canon.

Éowyn has the most beautiful grey eyes that Tauriel has seen in all her long life. The shade reminds her of stone, little pebbles on the bottom of streams, made smooth and round by running water, but also of mountains with deep roots in the earth. Sometimes they're the shade of a grey morning that might later brighten into a lively blue. She loves each shade.

Tauriel cannot deny that she has once more fallen for a pair of strong willed eyes that see her as so much more than what she's always thought herself to be.

She has fallen harder, this time, her soul irreparably tangled with that of her love and she knows, oh, how she knows, that she won't want to outlive her wife… for the mere thought of a single day when those grey eyes will not look at her full of love and crinkling up as Éowyn smiles is enough to make her weep.

In time, her wife likens her eyes to the green skies that sometimes come after a thunderstorm, often after Tauriel has made love to her wife with almost desperately wild abandon, clinging to every precious moment they are gifted. To hear that comparison is a new beginning, a fresh thing, and something that is all _theirs._ Tauriel doesn't think that she could bear her eyes likened to the forest in all its lovely shades of green, even if he had most often called her his lady of starlight. 

That first loss still hurts, even when she was never his wife… because she had thought they would have time, right until the moment when she knew it had always been a fool's hope.

She is a fool anew now, having let a piercing grey glance steal her heart in a shining white city of Men. Had she not looked up when she had, battle-tired and ragged, to see her fair brave maiden on the ramparts, clad in grey, wind playing with her golden hair and curiosity in her grey eyes as their gazes had met… 

A life is a life worth living and happiness can be crammed into a handful of days… that Tauriel had learned from experience now passed to bittersweet memories. But there, arrested by whom she would come to learn was the shieldmaiden of Rohan and daughter of kings, Tauriel had seen the possibility of _years_ , even when the world had still been hanging in balance and the shadow of Mordor still an all too real threat. With that one look and the handful of days they'd had together she had dared to dream, to hope, to think she might be happy once more.

She had ridden to the very gates of Mordor with a kiss and a promise and golden lock of hair tucked under her armour, next to her heart… and had made herself a wife in the ways of her people upon her return to Minas Tirith.

And all for a pair of morning-grey eyes that had sought hers out from a crowd.


	8. not her fate to linger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Éowyn has always known she'll leave Tauriel behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 8. promise | Tags: tauwyn, angst, mortality, drabble.

She doesn't ask, for how could she? She may have Tauriel's heart, but she doesn't own her choices, and even if she would like to ask, she cannot, will not.

Tauriel doesn't offer, either, not even as the years pass and she remains much as she's always been, ageless, pretty as the day they met.

Whereas Éowyn... Well, she's always known she will age.

The way Tauriel looks at every deepening wrinkle is more than sign enough that no promises will ever be offered or asked for, because Tauriel loves her ever still and Éowyn cannot ask her to linger.


	9. candy heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Éowyn gives Tauriel a candy heart for Valentines.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 9. candy.  
> Tags: Éowyn/Tauriel, modernish AU, high school AU, drabble, fluff.

For Valentine’s Day, Éowyn gives Tauriel a lipstick-red candy heart with “Will you be mine?” written on it in white.

Tauriel grins, pops the candy into her mouth and gives her a long, candy-tasting kiss, pressing her against the lockers until they’re both breathless and the bell has rung ages ago.

‘My silly love,’ she tells her after, brushing stray locks away from her face, ‘I’m already yours.’

‘Doesn’t hurt to ask,’ Éowyn says, a little sassily.

She kisses her more, then, cannot help it, and Éowyn is all the sweetness she needs, really, even if the candy was nice.


	10. illicit and secret

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Delia wants to kiss Patsy whenever she wants.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 10\. kiss | tags: delia/patsy, reference to period homophobia, angst.

Their kisses have always been illicit secrets, snatched in shadows, too often quick and furtive, because it just isn't safe.

Delia hates it, will hate it forever, even when she has to bite her tongue and bear it, while she wants to scream. She wants to be allowed to kiss Patsy in front of everyone, their friends and colleagues, in a crowd, everywhere, not just around those like them, whose love doesn't have the approval of society.

Still, she struggles against the narrow-mindedness of the world and so takes any touch she's permitted, always teetering on the edge of what is allowed with touching too long, looking too much and saying things she shouldn't… at least by society's definition of what a friendship, all they're allowed, between two women should be.

Which is why she kisses Patsy with desperation when she can and waits for the day when she can do it whenever she wants.


	11. no regrets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mina keeps Lucy safe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 11. rescue | Tags: westenray, angst, dubious morality, canon what canon, dark.

Mina does what she must to ensure Lucy's safety.

This is what she tells herself as she washes blood from her hands, scrubbing meticulously under her fingernails. There had been no other way. It had been necessary. Lucy will always be more important, whatever the cost. She scrubs.

When she is done, the skin of her hands red and raw.

Lucy waits for her on the bed, saved and lost, still with blood around her mouth. She had helped with her own rescue, being decisive where Mina had faltered.

There is a hungry smile, not at all human, on Lucy's face as she goes to her and it's the future Mina has chosen… because she didn't rescue herself.

But how could she have chosen otherwise, she thinks, when Lucy sinks her fangs into her neck, making her gasp and shiver and shudder. This is what she had known would be, this is what Lucy is now and will be forevermore, until she ceases to exist. Mina has kept Lucy existing, and what of it if she had killed for it?

She has no regrets.


	12. music of the stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tauriel dances to the music of the stars, Éowyn to the msuic of her heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 12. music. | éowyn/tauriel, drabble, fluff, warriorwives.

Tauriel dances to the music of the skies, she seems to need no other music than that of the stars shifting, hearing things that Éowyn, a mere mortal, cannot.

But she doesn't need to hear the music to dance with her wife, because her body moves along with her, following her lead. And then, in that elven swirl that seems to have no set form, Èowyn can almost hear it as well.

Dancing, she hears the beat of her heart, the delighted laughter of her love, that is music enough and the most precious of all, the song of love


	13. no going back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucy is mire beautiful than ever to Mina.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 13. beautiful | westenray, introspection, canon what canon, here there be vampires and all that comes with them. G.

I shouldn't think of her as beautiful like this, but she is, like a fier-haired angel of death. I should, and once would have, shied away from her embrace, her demanding kiss, but now I answer to it, kissing black ferociously.

We have both done things that mean there is no going back to who we once were. I know Lucy doesn't regret her trespasses and with each passing day I feel my morals shifting bit by bit, even when there are things I will not ever do. Or so I now tell myself, as only the future can tell what shall come to pass.

But I am perhaps already irrevocably lost because I do not shy away from Lucy with her lips bloody and her eyes feral, she looks ready to devour me as well and I would let her. All I can think to describe her now is  _ beautiful _ .

I taste the death she has brought forth on my lips and welcome it, heady and unrepentant. She slays the wicked, or so she tells me, but a part of me doesn't care. She is never as beautiful as when she is back from a hunt, flushed with her excesses, her pallor momentarily vanquished by the lives of others that she has consumed drinking.

She is almost like the Lucy of old, but more bold, more  _ everything _ . She can act freely now, according to her desires, and that makes her more beautiful than ever.

I do not stand a chance of denying her, nor do I want to.


	14. bargaining with sorrow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tauriel cannot forget Éowyn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 14\. anniversary. | taywyn, drabble, angst, major character death, g.

She marks the day with more tears each year, moving farther away from their shared happiness.

This year she's lived more years without Éowyn than she ever did with her and weeps more bitterly than ever, mayhaps even more than the first anniversary of her passing. She'd known she was bargaining with sorrow when she let attraction blossom into love, and yet…

The bitterness is greater still because in the end, the sea had not called her to sail on to greener shores where she may have found peace, so she wanders on, everything reminding her, missing half her heart.


	15. in another world

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They meet in a cafe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 15. alternate universe. | Tags: tauwyn, modern AU, meet cute, drabble, fluff, sneaky Dori cameo.

In another world, they meet in a cafe and bond over horses, archery and sword fighting.

Tauriel falls for Éowyn's wheat-coloured hair, Éowyn for Tauriel's starlight eyes, and then who they are. They end up chatting until the cafe closes and the proprietor, a grey-haired polite gentleman reminds them of the closing hour.

They walk hand in hand through the warm summer-evening and Tauriel kisses Éowyn so long she almost misses her bus home.

Tauriel proposes to Éowyn in that same cafe on the anniversary of their first meeting and the future is bright and the whole world is open.


	16. of what might have been

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Laura wakes in the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 16. nightmare. | carlau, angst, canon what canon. G.

Laura wakes with a start, heart nearly beating out of her chest, eyes filled with tears. She aches with a sadness that defies quantifying. She remembers crystal-clear the words her father had thought soothing.  _ "She is gone now and you are safe." _

Her hand is reaching in a panic because that's not right, because it  _ hadn't _ been that way,  _ can't have _ . Her searching makes contact with a shape beside her and she swallows a sob as it moves under her touch.

_ Carmilla. _

She buries her face into Carmilla's rich curls and chases away the nightmare of what might have been.


	17. one step ahead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucy and Mina run.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 17. safety. | westenray, drabble, canon what canon.

Safety doesn't mean staying still, it's a state of constant movement for the longest time. It should be tiring, but is actually exciting, though there will come a time when they'll tire of it.

But if they move, they're always one step ahead of pursuit… and safe.

Eventually time itself gives them the safety distance never could, because while Lucy and Mina both look fresh-faced and young, mortality has caught up with their pursuit with finality.

They have no idea what to do with their freedom, the lack of a constant need to run and hide… and that's absolutely terrifying.


	18. ghost of laughter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tauriel never laughs, now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 18. laughter| taywyn, angst, drabble | rating: g

Her laughter is a rare thing now, though when her smiles are not, even tinged with sadness as they are. But the abundant yet too few memories carefully stored in her heart are often of laughter, shared and private, raucous and stifled, of happiness and North shared.

She thinks that Éowyn had the prettiest laughter and adored how unrestrainedly she let it out, and how easily she could invite her to join in.

While she might smile now, she barely laughs, it hurts too much to do so alone, when the ghost of her wife's laughter will forever haunt her.


	19. deliverance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tauriel has been existing, not living.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 19\. gift | tauwyn, drabble, angst, major character death | rating: g

Tauriel knows in an instant that it's over, even when her body is still moving, it is a mortal wound. A gift. Though not instantaneous.

She fells the orc that has been her deliverance with the same efficiency she has always shown. Compassionate. Effective.

Breathing hurts. Standing hurts. She lets herself crumple. She welcomes death as it rushes upon her, even though… well, she cannot complain now, not even when she has lived too long without. Though not a full life, merely an existence, decades of hunt.

She regrets only that she won't see Éowyn again, but at least everything ---


	20. no rivaling the brightness of their smiles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The summer is shining.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 20. sunshine | tauwyn, fluff | rating: g

They lay on a field of flowers without a care in the world, suspended in the eternity of a summer's day sunshine where everything wad possible.

The sun tried in vain to rival the brightness of their smiles, but could not, and possibly felt privileged in shining upon such happiness so consuming that it was almost too much to be allowed.

Tauriel and Éowyn cared not, thought not, wrapped up in each other and the wonder of being alive, the beauty of the summer's day secondary to everything else.

They kissed, unhurried, without a thought that those kisses would some day end, once cruel mortality caught up with them. There was none of that here, not in this forever of an embrace where time ceased to have meaning.

The great evil had been won even if not all its servants had been vanquished, and there was work to be done. Later. Now they had this, were allowed this, an endless afternoon in the sunshine on an rambunctiously flowering field, the sun kissing their skin.

And they lived.


	21. no seasons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Weather doesn't bother Lucy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 21\. seasons | westenray, drabble | rating: g

Changing weather has no effect on Lucy who walks on freshly fallen snow barefoot as carefree and light of step as if it was sun-kissed sand on a beach, the loose snow whipping over her toes the way foaming waves would.

She doesn't flinch away from heat, either, cares not for humidity or scorching sun that makes light streaks into her hair, though she prefers overcast days.

Mina, shivering or overheated, simply observes her without quite knowing if she should envy or mourn the mortal Lucy she has lost forever, but she cannot stop loving her even still, never shall.


	22. everything between the lines

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amanda calls Fie every week, always saying less than she really wants.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 22. phone | amanda/fie, drabble, pre-relationship, angst | fandom: badehotellet | rating: g.
> 
> Not my first fic that I've written for this ship and in this fandom, but my first posted.

They call each other on the phone and never say anything more than what is proper, yet saying everything between the lines regardless, all those suppressed feelings that the world doesn't want them to name.

Amanda isn't sure if Fie can admit her true feelings even to herself, but cannot bring herself to ask. Because the calls are only possible if they are just friends, and some  would say they couldn't even be that.

So she keeps her silence, because no week feels real without a call and summer is so very far away.]

It's enough and too little, yet...


	23. not today

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Their childhoods were far part, yet maybe not so very different.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 23. childhood | tauwyn, drabble, light angst | rating: g.

Tauriel listens to Éowyn's stories about her childhood with rapt attention, never mentioning how she'd been killing orcs and had already lost one love by the time her wife had been born.

She shares her own recollections, strains her memory back to the far away past, a childhood which hadn't been as carefree, but not filled with constant peril, either. Éowyn listens with equal intensity.

Talking of the past makes time stop, cocoons them in a forever where time and age have no shadow, a time of infinite possibilities, an innocence neither now possess.

Time will matter, but not today.


	24. what they have become

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They love, despite what they have become.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 24\. lie | westenray, ficlet, angst | rating: g

That she hasn't noticed Lucy has changed, that her love for her hasn't changed, is the greatest lie between them. As it is, Mina doesn't rightly know what Lucy thinks about it, or if she is even aware, or… most heartbreakingly  _ knows _ yet doesn't care.

So Mina keeps her silence.

There is really no use in airing out the truth, it wouldn't benefit either of them one bit, as the truth of her loving Lucy all the same hasn't changed, is a constant, unwavering.

But the things Mina is willing to do for that love… those have changed, and have thus changed the foundation of her love. She now loves Lucy despite fully knowing what her transformation has revealed, beyond her sharpened edges and her carelessness now too often turned cruel.

And maybe Lucy loves her more for what Mina has become because of  _ her _ : a killer.


	25. no greater adventure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a decade of warrioring and hunting stray orcs, Tauriel and Éowyn meet a child, the lone survivor of an orc raid.  
> They never stood a chance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 25\. adventure | tauwyn, ficlet, warrior wives, post War of the Ring | rating: g

Tauriel looks down at the unexpected bundle in her arms, it is perhaps the most precious thing she has ever held, and she has absolutely no clue what to do but care, even when she is terrified to her core and knows that… but no, she cannot say that she shouldn’t, not even in her thoughts. She cannot but care for this lost little thing who had sought her out, had reached out to her wordlessly as she had been cleaning her blades of orc-blood at the edges of a settlement where they had thought there had been no survivors, and climbed onto her lap despite her blood-spattered armour,

The little child of Men feels too thin in her arms and looks absolutely worn out. They are a survivor, there is no doubt about that, and she cannot stop herself growing attached even in the short time that it takes for the child to fall asleep without a word. Her blades lie forgotten on the ground, as her hands have come to cradle the pitiful form in her lap.

She is quiet for such a long time, so enthralled and quietly falling irrevocably in love that she doesn’t quite remember that Éowyn is watching her, even when she is always aware of her, _feels_ her in the core of her heart.

So, the question almost startles her, if only just, and the wonder in her arms doesn’t wake.

‘We could, couldn’t we? Raise her?’

Tauriel looks at her wife, at the subtle hope in her face, no, not subtle at all, but a yearning, clear as anything even if her tone hadn’t already been more than enough. They have spent a decade being warriors, hunting the remnants of Sauron’s evil creatures, and that has been good. But time _will_ advance on her wife, etch lines onto her face where there were none, no matter how much Tauriel may wish to stop it, to halt its natural passing. And there _are_ things in life worth having besides battle, experiences neither of them has ever had, even if neither has ever complained.

And now here Éowyn is, asking of her to settle down, to give what love they can for this poor orphan in her arms… she is asking for the gift of motherhood, to choose another kind of saving those who are not able to defend themselves.

‘We could,’ she says, before she can talk herself out of it, because she is afraid, for the warm bundle in her lap is yet another heartache. She looks down at the calm, sleeping face, which looks nothing at all like either of them, and she cannot say no. To either of them. ‘We shall,’ she says, her fingers carefully combing through curly strands. She is looking at Éowyn and letting her see everything, to match the mixed emotions on her wife's face, the hope tinged with terror, as neither knows how to care for a child beyond base needs, yet are willing to try regardless.

It will be an adventure like no other.


	26. unflappable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tauriel and Éowyn's first date.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 26. movie. | tauwyn, modern AU | rating: t

They’d been planning to go out on their first date, but had ended up cuddling up on Tauriel’s couch to watch a movie.

Or at least pretending to.

In reality they were wrapped up in each other, kissing and touching, and had no idea afterwards what movie they had even watched, remembering instead every single lingering and wondering touch and sigh. 

Their exploration was only interrupted by Tauriel’s flatmate coming home with his boyfriend, whom Éowyn had not met, but greeted wearing a sports bra and shorts, not ruffled at all. Tauriel was so gone on her in that moment.


	27. perfectly matched

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In another world they are a dragon and knight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 27\. wings | tauwyn, drabble, alternate universe.

In another world, another life, Tauriel is an ancient dragon with copper-scales and Éowyn a fearless knight, coming to confront her.

But it doesn’t end at that, with a felled dragon and a blade dripping crimson dragon blood.

No.

Because the fearless knight sees the dragon doesn’t need to be vanquished and instead rides on her back into battle, all the better to slay orcs and other nasties, wheat-blonde strands whipping around her face as she laughs.

She has always wanted wings and her dragon a knight to be on her side, and are perfectly matched in skill and goal.


	28. always

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emma counts her blessings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 28\. perfect | swanqueen, drabble, family fluff | rating: g

Emma smiles at the scene in the kitchen, Regina baking with Henry, both of them laughing. There is flour on their cheeks, which is something that wouldn’t have happened before, she’s sure.

They’re a perfect picture of family bonding, carefree and happy.

It’s something she thought so long that she wouldn’t have and now feels almost like too much happiness to be allowed.

Regina must sense her looking and glances up at her, her eyes bright. ‘Are you just going to stand there or are you going to help us?’

‘Always,’ she answers, taking the final step into the kitchen.


End file.
